With so many opinions, definitions and understandings in the world today of what love truly is and how it is best expressed, we need an objective source of truth. People call a million and one different things love, but many of them don’t fit within the model God provided for us in the person of Jesus.

Compassion, while often loving, isn’t always. It’s compassionate and loving to pick up someone’s rent payment to help them through a tough time. But continue that same action, month after month, and it can cease being loving and become enabling (while still being compassionate). The same with tolerance and acceptance, commitment and loyalty, and dozens of other admirable traits. They have their place as manners in which love can be expressed, but aren’t always loving and can’t be considered synonymous with Biblical love.

We’re concluding 40 Days of Increase with a focus on what Paul referred to as “a more excellent way”. Amidst his teaching on spiritual gifts with the zealous Corinthians, Paul took a “time out” of sorts to clarify what mattered even more than prophecy, tongues, healing, miracles and the like: Love.

Those other things are important for certain, as evidenced by Paul picking right back up with the topic of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 14 after his chapter 13 detour. But Paul makes it clear that they all pale in comparison to love. “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).

Paul had a lot to say about hope in his letter to the Romans. Following his commentary on the life of Abraham in chapter 4, he continues on the topic of hope in chapter 5, saying:

We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (Rom. 5:2-5)

Second on Paul’s list of timeless and enduring spiritual traits is hope. “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three,” Paul told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:13). Love gets a lot of air time, and for good reason: it’s the greatest. And faith certainly gets taught a lot since it’s one of scripture’s core themes. But hope sometimes feels like an overlooked middle child.

Sure, hope gets mentioned from time to time as something we shouldn’t lose. And we know in a generic, possibly obligatory sense, that God’s people ought to be hopeful. But on the whole, I wouldn’t say that Christians have become known for their hope. Sadly, quite the opposite could be said: we’ve become known for cynicism, fear and foreboding.

Peter challenged his readers to “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). The implication is that our hopefulness ought to be so evident that it regularly elicits questions.